


The Heart Seeks Vengeance

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Detective Noir, Detectives, F/F, Mages, Mages and Templars, Murder, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Templars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-23 15:07:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4881460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of grisly murders in Skyhold requires the attention of the only person around who has a good idea of how crimes like these work--Varric Tethras. Living in Kirkwall is kind of an education on the subject. Can he and Sera, his faithful assistant at least until something more distracting comes along, find the killer before he, she or it strikes again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not my world, but since I love police shows and Varric wrote Hard in Hightown--and just sort of acts like a charming, dapper detective--this seemed like two great tastes that tasted great together.

Varric knelt by the body in an alley way between two of Skyhold's major courtyards. In contrast to their lush greenery--overseen by Skyhold's young, sweet elven gardener Floria--it was dank, smelly and a popular place for drunks coming out of the Herald's Rest to vomit or piss on their way back to the barracks or dormitory. In short, he reflected, just like home. A pang of homesickness for Kirkwall ran through him, dagger sharp. He slapped the side of his head. Get it together man... you're missing Kirkwall--Kirkwall, of all places. There was better real estate in the Deep Roads! But, ah, well... a man couldn't help where he was born, right? Or loving it, no matter what a stinking shit-hole it might have been.

Sergeant Threnn squatted beside him. "That performance caused by anything particularly interesting or did a big insect just land on your forehead?"

"Nah, neither." Varric smoothed his hair. "Just woolgathering, Sergeant. Although... I do wonder why you sent one of your guys up for me when you found this."

She shrugged. "We're all garrison troops. Hell, I'm a quartermaster by trade. With Morris doing the bulk of supply now, and Bonny Sims taking care of anything else, Lord Trevelyan put me and the rest of my lads to work as a police force. But..." She grimaced.

"Yeah?"

"Well, we're not quite the Val Royeaux City Guard, are we? We're not even the Kirkwall Guard under Captain Hendyr." She wiped sweat off her brow. That was one thing about being on the top of a mountain in summer--there might be a breeze but there also wasn't any place to escape the sun. "We figured that you, er... well, we've all read Hard in Hightown, up in the barracks, right?"

"Really?" Varric grinned. "My compliments to your taste. Much better than that of some Seekers I know."

"Yeah, well... right... we sort of figured that since you knew all about this kind of thing--you know, murder and intrigue and the like--that you would be able to help us figure out who offed this poor bugger."

He ran a hand through his thick, blond mane, forcing it once again into disarray. "I hate to disappoint a fan, but you guys do know I made everything in those books up, right?"

"You were close friends with Guard Captain Aveline Hendyr, correct?"

"Yeah, all the way back when she was just a big, strapping ginger beatwalker named Aveline Vallen. Still, if you're looking at that as evidence of my veracity..." He laughed and immediately felt bad to be doing so over a man's corpse. "All I can tell you on that account, Threnn, is that Aveline spent most of her time rolling her eyes and clucking her tongue at my books. The only thing she hated worse was Isabela's 'friend-fiction.'"

Threnn's eybrows drew together. "Friend-fiction, messere?"

He waved his hands. "You don't want to know, really. Trust me."

"All right."

"So, yeah... I'm sorry--although not as much as this poor bastard--but I don't know if I can help you. I really don't have a lot of actual experience with shit like this." He stroked his chin. "Standing over dead bodies, yeah, I've done a lot of that in my time, but not figuring out who put them there and why."

"Nevertheless, you have more experience even from your fiction writing than any of my men. We're fair enough at rousting drunks and keeping the peace but..." She spread her hands. "Working out something like this is beyond us, I'm afraid."

"All right, all right. I never could resist a lady in distress. Maybe I'll get some ideas for the next Hard in Hightown." He ran his thick finger down the dead man's cheek. "What could have brought you here, old boy, in such a state?"

The corpse didn't answer. The did frequently enough, especially in Crestwood and the Fallow Mire but really all the hell over Thedas, that Varric didn't feel his question to have been totally moot. The slain was a stocky, barrel chested man in his mid-forties. His long, aquiline nose suggested ancestry in the Free Marches just as surely as the pale skin said he wasn't from Antiva or Rivain, and the drooping, rusty mustaches suggested Tantervale. Why those blasted soup strainers stayed fashionable out west Varric couldn't say, but the men of Tantervale, Wildervale and Hasmal didn't seem to feel their faces were complete without one. It all looked a little to Nevarran for his comfort, but thankfully the trend had never caught on in Kirkwall. The choice between being unfashionable and looking like a poser, desperate to wear just a little bit or Orzammar on his face... Varric shuddered. No thank you, ma'am.

The most notable feature, excepting that glorious, ridiculous mustache, was a second, crimson smile sliced right under the man's chin. It gaped raw and ragged, disclosing severed nerves and blood vessels--that accounted for the lake of blood spread around the body and all over the walls, he supposed. The trachea's tough gristle had suffered damage, too, suggesting that this man's killer had set to sawing on his throat with a vengeance. Or, Varric supposed, he might have just not known what the hell he was doing. He shook his head. The dead man's eyes glared up at him, seemed to testify that whoever had reduced him to this state had known plenty.

"Well?" Threnn cocked her head. "Do you see anything?"

"I can tell you this much, Threnn; he's dead as shit."

She rolled her eyes. "I could have figured out that much, begging your pardon."

Varric stood, dusted bloody dirt particles off the knees of his trousers. "Well, what did you want me to divine from just looking at him? Do you know this man's name, at least?"

"Ah, yes." Threnn smiled. "That I can help you with." She produced a notepad from the folds of her quilted jacket--which, he noted, must have been brutally hot on a morning like this. "The deceased is Ser Moden Drand, a Templar formerly of the Markham Circle. He's forty-four years old and was originally born and raised in Tantervale."

"Aha!" Varric snapped his fingers. "I knew it. That mustache just doesn't lie, Threnn. Hell, that ugly thing can't lie."

"Right, right." She readjusted the notepad, found her place. "He held the rank of Knight-Lieutenant and acted as the master-at-arms for the Circle, for a time. He oversaw the training of Templar acolytes until..." She flipped the page. "Well, until about two years ago. After that he was given the charge of junior apprentices, helping them get settled into Circle life and the like."

"Hmmm..." Varric tugged his magnificent mop of sandy chest hair. "That's quite a demotion, from master-at-arms to babysitting apprentices, and no job at all for a Knight-Lieutenant. I wonder what could have hacked his superiors off that much?"

She tucked the pad away. "I can't say, messere, but my surmise would be misconduct of some species with his recruits, or some colossal blunder. Perhaps he overlooked a blood mage, or something, and the maleficar went mad?"

"Eh, doesn't seem to fit his role, you know?" He scratched his head. "Besides, we'd have probably heard about a rampaging maleficar at the Markham Circle."

Her eyes widened. "Lately, messere? I'd be surprised if anything less than a high dragon in the Markham Circle's First Enchanter's toilet would have been noted at all. If you haven't noticed, things have been a bit mad lately."

"You make a pretty good point, Threnn." He chuckled. "With those kind of reasoning skills I'm not sure you need my help after all."

"You're a funny dwarf, you know that?"

"My charm is what keeps me afloat." He cracked his knuckles. "Shame it couldn't do the same for him. Look at those cuts on his arms and wrists; he must have tried to fight off his attacker."

She examined the raw, red cuts all over the fallen Templar's forearms. Blood had caked around the edges, and both muscle and tendon stood in rank contrast to the now pale skin. "Looks like he put up quite a hell of a fight, poor bastard. Survived the life of a Templar and then got backed up against a wall and slashed to rags."

"Put up a hell of a fight, yeah, but from the angle of those cuts whoever did it must have been mighty close. Look." He pointed out the steep angle of the wounds. "If the attacker had been further off Ser Moden would have tried to grapple him, took all the cuts to the back of his hands and top of his arms. This seems to me like the cutter was close enough to kiss, just about, and our Templar threw his arms up in a last ditch effort to protect his face and throat." Varric snapped his fingers. "Moden almost certainly knew his killer!"

"I'll believe you, since I don't have a damn clue, but what leads you to that conclusion? It could have just been a rough fight, like you said. He wasn't a small man."

"Well, the man was a fully trained, battle-hardened Templar, right? I can't imagine he'd have let some footpad get close enough to carve him up like this. Ergo, the killer knew him. I'd suspect he was nervous, too. Might be the first man he's ever killed."

Threnn tilted her head. "How do you figure?"

"A cold-hearted, hardened killer, if he was up close enough to jam his tongue into the man's mouth, would have slipped a dagger into his ribs. This kind of sawing and hacking tells me that you're going to be looking for someone who holds his knife with a damned shaky hand."

"You're making sense. So all we've got to do is go looking for a friend or acquaintance of Ser Moden's, from some point during his forty plus winters, or at least someone he thought he recognized, with no cutting experience and a bad case of jitters." She chuckled. "And here I thought it was going to be a hard thing!" Threnn pushed a hand through her dark, shaggy hair. "Shame that the killer didn't leave something behind... a footprint, anything. Or, maybe, he could just wander around in the bloody clothes he was wearing and wait for my lads to pick him up. That'd make the whole damn show a sight easier."

Varric grinned. "Ah, Threnn... if it was that easy you wouldn't be working for your pay. Plus, I'd still have nothing to do today." He stretched, let his spine crackle and pop. "Heh, that rhymed. Well, I guess my first task will be to go around and ask his known associates if they have anything to tell me. Would you happen to have a list I could hang onto?"

She fumbled with her notepad for a moment, ripped off a sheet and handed it to him. About a dozen names were scrawled on it in her quick, slashing hand. "There you go, messere. Hopefully this will produce some leads. I can't imagine Lord Trevelyan would be too pleased about recruits being murdered right under his nose."

Varric studied the list. "Right, right. If we're murdering each other then the Red Templars and Venatori can't do it for us."

She colored. "It's just, well... letting this go on seems like a damn poor way to repay his kindness and hospitality."

"I understand, and I'll do my best to help you get to the bottom of this."

"Thank you, messere. Now I need to go and collect some of the lads to get this grim mess cleared away." She snapped him a crisp salute, which he returned with all the enthusiasm that a dwarf opposed to rank and hierarchy in all its forms could muster.

Varric kneeled beside Ser Moden Drand's mutilated body, again, and patted him on the chest. "All right, my good man... let's see what we can do for you." He sighed. "It's going to be a long day."


	2. Chapter 2

Varric scuffed through the lush undergrowth in Skyhold's upper courtyard, lost in thoughts about how he'd go through questioning Ser Moden's close friends, or at the very least colleagues, when he arrived at the Herald's Rest. The Inquisition's Templar recruits seemed like a good place to start his investigation, of course, but he didn't know them as well as he probably should have--as more or less the Inquisition's unofficial bursar and chief financial officer--and had not a single wordly idea which of them might have been close enough to the dead man to provide any information. Mages, too, might have been helpful--and this would not be the first killing at the opportunity of revenge that had occurred during the war between Templar and the Circles' former denizens. He filed that away for later consideration, but before he could think of anything else something feathery and fluttery slipped into his ear.

Varric jumped, just avoided thudding on his ass, and scowled at the elf standing over him. Sera, for her part, collapsed in helpless giggles. "You thought it was a fuggin' bee, marvelous!" She capered and sang. "A bee in your bonnet!

He scratched his ear, tried to work the queer feeling out of his head. "What is it with you and bees, Buttercup? Besides, I don't wear a bonnet."

"But you could, taddybums," she said. "That's the point, yeah?"

"I don't think I'd be very becoming in a bonnet." He offered the Merchant's Guild bow and turned to go.

"You'd be so cute!" She followed, scampering on quick steps in soft shoes. "Besides, I know some things you'd love to know."

"Like how to pick through several hundred Templars and mages who hate each to figure out who hated one particular Templar enough to halfway saw his head off?"

"Er, not so much about that... but yeah. That. I know something you don't know."

He turned and tapped his finger on the end of her short, upturned nose. "If you tell me, then I'll know and be able to laugh about it with you."

"Well, sure, but..." She dodged around his finger to nip its tip. "I won't be able to giggle at you for not knowing anymore. Won't be half as fun."

"That's where you're wrong, Buttercup." He flicked his fingers, faster than her sparkling green eyes could follow, to ruffle her unkempt hair. "If we find out who killed this poor guy then we'll be able to point and laugh at him together while Mischa hands down whatever justice he dreams up."

"Ooh, that's a point, that is." She grinned evilly. "I might just tell you the thing I know you don't."

"All right... while the sun's still in the sky would be nice. I've got to get over the the Herald's Rest and ask questions."

"Like what?"

"If anyone wanted to kill Ser Moden Drand, that kind of thing."

"That's stupid."

"Why, pray tell?"

She rolled her eyes. "Because, Chesty McHair, if someone wanted to kill him they wouldn't say so, or they would say they did but didn't do. It's just logic, hey?"

"I wasn't aware you knew the word."

"I know lots of words." She giggled. "My favorites are the naughty ones, like arse and tits and nugscrote-chewing-cockwomble."

"I stand in awe of your poetic vocabulary. Now..." He spread offered his hand, as if waiting for her to put something in it. "Could you please tell me what you know?"

"Er... sure. On one condition."

"And that is?" He winced. "And please don't say editorial control over my next book."

She blew a raspberry. "Blech. Who wants anything like that to do with some fuggy ol' book? Nah... what I want is to follow through with you and figure out who did this killing." She scowled. "I don't like killing on my turf, except as I do it. Or Inky. Or the Bull. Or just someone the hell I trust."

"Okay, that makes sense to me." It didn't, so much, but nothing she said ever did. "I'll take all the help I can get."

"Righty-rainy, then." She gripped his hand, shook it, and then started swaying them back and forth. "What I have to tell you is that you missed something all the hell important back where Ser Moody Drain was lying there all dead as shite."

"Like?" This could be something wonderful--Varric hoped it would be something wonderful, like a signed damn confession--but realized that Sera might have become fascinated with a particuarly delightful ladybug near the body. He prayed, fervently, that it would prove to be the former.

"There was a footprint right under him, in the blood and stuff. A small one." She snapped her fingers under his nose. "You're looking for a woman, Inspector Chesthair, or an elf--man or woman. Maybe a really super cocked off little kid. Someone bitsy. Heh. The bitsy bandit. That's good. That's what we'll call him, hey? Or her. It. Could have been a nug mauling. Could've."

"Andraste's burning bush..." He embraced her, disregarding the squawk of protest. "Buttercup, you just cut my pool of suspects by a third to a half, at least."

"Heh," she said, "I knew it was a pissy little kid. You can't trust those fuggin rug nugs. So..." She balanced on the toes of one foot until it became boring, and then skipped in place. "Am I in or yeah?"

"You're in!" He grinned. "After that, I'd deputize you against your will if I had to."

Her face fell, grew grim as he'd ever seen it. "Yuck, 'deputize.' Make it sound like I'm in the army or the Guard, or some shite. I'd lose my cred with all friends."

He started towards the Rest. "How about if I let you be the bad cop when we question people?"

She jogged after him, dancing from one foot to the other. "I don't actually quite know what that means, but I like the sound of it. Allons-y!"

Varric found Herald's Rest as he usually did: not much to recommend it apart from cold ale and a roof that kept the rain off. It was no Hanged Man, that was for sure. Which was, he reflected, probably something of a selling point where most of your saner patrons were concerned. Where most bars could have a rat or cockroach problem, the Hanged Man had to deal with an ash wraith or two. Just part of life in the big, red city, the kind of thing that made life interesting and Kirkwallers a cut or two tougher than the silken souls from Wycombe or Ostwick.

"Ahoy..." Sera tugged his sleeve. "At the corner table, nursing her lager like a babe. I've seen that bint hanging around Mister Ser Moden Drand."

Varric scanned the crowd, tried to let his eyes adjust. "Which one?"

"Ugh..." She turned his head for him. "The skinny one with a beaky-arse nose and dishwater curls. Looks like she's been sucking a Quarinus lime."

"Okay, yeah." He disentangled his cranium from her fingers. "Let's go and see what we can shake loose from her. Know a name?"

Sera shrugged. "I just call her the one with the beaky-arse nose, usually." She chuckled. "Might be why she don't answer me much."

"It's not the best basis for friendship. All right." He drew a deep breath. "Let's see what we've got." Varric strolled toward the table where she sat, put on his most charming rakish grin and plopped down across from the hard-faced young woman. "What are you drinking there, beautiful?"

She fixed him with a baleful, ice blue gaze from the one eye uncovered by her hair. "It's a lager, and even a damnfool blind dwarf can see I'm nowhere beautiful." Her thick Bannorn accent made the words lilt and move and, at the same time, cut razor-sharp through a man's defenses. Just not fair, Varric thought--the investigator is supposed to put his subjects off guard in these stories, not the other way round. 

"Nowhere beautiful?" He chuckled. "I daresay, my lady--"

"I'm not your lady, Master Tethras, and yes. Nowhere. Take a look at this." She tilted her head to the side, letting the auburn wreath of hair fall away from her face. It revealed the raw, pink scar tissue of a healed burn stretching from forehead to chin, leaving the affected eye milky white. "My partner and I caught a maleficar in the Redcliffe hills, about six months ago. He brought up a lesser rage demon--stupid arse got possessed for his effort--and the fucking thing swiped my face. Worst pain you can imagine, mate... living fire poured all across your face like boiling nug fat."

He winced. "Sorry." 

She drained her mug. "Don't be. It's the job. Fool me for not having a helmet on. Least I wasn't the one ended as a hacked up pile of abomination on the floor." Her mouth twisted with grotesque effect. "The healer we had around was able to save my eye so I didn't just have a raw hole. Can't see out of it for shit, though."

Sera poked her tongue out and grimaced. "Always gonna get you up the back end, innit?"

"No fucking doubt my creepy little knife-eared friend. Now..." She let her unsettling eyes sweep across them. "How about you two tell me what's got you two jawing at me?"

"Listen," Varric said, "at least let me refresh your drink. That's the least I can do. What's your poison?"

"Lager and regret, Master Tethras, but I'll just take another lager." 

He called Flissa and ordered a round for them all. While they waited for the busty, giggly barmaid to return, Varric consulted the list given to him by Sergeant Threnn. "So, would you happen to be Ser Leslie Dyer?"

"Nah, mate, my luck aint that bad." This answer struck Sera funny, for some reason. Before Varric could move to another name on his list, the Templar went on. "I'm Ser Yennifer Child, out of Kinloch Hold--call me Yenni, if you must. I'd say pleased to meet you but..." She shrugged. "Not much pleases me anymore."

They received their drinks. Varric paid, let everyone nurse their drinks in silence a long moment. Sera blew the foam off hers, made bubbles, fidgeted. Sitting still, he reflected, did not seem to be a talent his new partner possessed. Finally he spoke. "Would it please you to find out that your colleague Ser Moden Drand was killed this morning?"

If he had expected shock, disappointment and reality rained down instead. "I wouldn't say pleased, not with another Templar getting murdered like that, but I can't say I'm surprised. Drand could act a right bastard, time to time." She made a protective sign with her fingers and spat through it. "Sorry. Can't do with no vengeful ghosts on my arse."

"Don't worry about it." He consulted his notes. "How did you know Drand, anyway? He was a Tantervaler, working in the Markham Circle before he came here. You're as Fereldan as my partner, here, working Kinloch."

"Wasn't always there, though. Did my training at Markham, under Drand." She choked on her lager, gagged, stuck her tongue out. The effect was so like a scarred mirror of Sera that chills ran down Varric's spine. "Had a bad habit of getting far too friendly with his girl recruits, did old Lieutenant Drand."

"Did anyone object?"

She doodled with her finger in a pool of spilt lager. "Nah, not if you wanted to get along. If you wanted to get ahead, you got friendly back. Nothing too much, y'know? Just a squeeze of tits or arse, a little fumbling after hours. Nothing worse than I did back on the farm."

"With that ugly bugger Drandy?" Sera scrubbed her ears, as if to wipe the words out, and then her eyes to erase the image. "Yuck! I can't know that."

Yenni cawed. "You can't take the heat, creeper, stay out of the kitchen. Can't imagine a little Alienage alley-rat like you hasn't seen, heard, shit, done worse in your time."

"Maybe, maybe not," Sera said. "But ugh... all that gruddy mustacheness." She shuddered. "I just can't even."

Varric made a note on his own pad of paper. "At least now we know what might have gotten him moved from training recruits to overseeing apprentices."

Yenni winked her good eye. "We've got a winner, mates. He could go fuck around with apprentices all day and night and no one would say boo to him." She finished her drink. "If you want to know more about that, ask Dyer--one you wanted first. She'd know more. She was the one ratted Drand out."

Varric nodded, underlined her name on the list. "Thanks, Yenni. You've put us ahead hours. We might be able to figure out who did this yet."

She called Flissa, put in another order. "What point, hey? Drand was a right vicious fuck; probably needed killing. Besides... we're all just walking maggot meal, anyway, Corphyshit flapping around with that archdemon of his."

He laid a coin on the table. "At least let me buy your next drink."

"Meh, it's your copper, mate. And all in a good cause." She laughed. "Getting me drunk as shit."

"That's the spirit, I guess," Sera said. "Or the spirits. Kind you drink, yeah?" She giggled. "Punny." Maryden, in the background, had begun to play the song she wrote for Sera. Its cheery chords and boisterous chorus underscored the absurdity of her joke and the situation's grimness.

When Flissa brought the next round and Yenni returned to brooding over the deep, amber liquid, Varric rocked back on his chair, prepared to get up and go forth. He needn't have bothered. One of Threnn's men-at-arms jogged, puffing, into the tavern. "Master Tethras?"

He looked the flushed, sweating young man up and down--damn those studded leather jerkins must have sweltered in this weather. "Yeah?"

"There's been another murder. Sergeant Threnn wants you to come right away."

Varric sighed. "Let me guess... Templar woman named Leslie Dyer?"

The young guard's brow wrinkled. "Well... yes. How did you know?"

Sera cackled. "It's cause he's the best detective in Thedas, puffy pants, and the world's first magic dwarf beside. Fuggin amazing, this guy. Truly. Better'n bees, even."

Varric hauled himself out of the chair and started toward the door, wished his back and knees would comply with a simple request not to ache. It had already been a long day, couldn't help getting longer.


	3. Chapter 3

Dyer hadn't been subjected to anything Drand hadn't, Varric thought as he looked the body over. Knowing what Drand had done, though, what Dyer had refused to stand for, he couldn't help the sympathy from welling up in the pit of his stomach. Her throat was not cut, like his, but he found a short knife buried to its wire wrapped hilt between her collar-bones. No defensive slashes on her hands suggested that the poor woman had not even had time to defend herself, might have trusted her slayer to the very last or been taken unawares. Perhaps, worst of all, the killer could have grown more skilled and confident at his or her dark work.

No, Varric reflected, that didn't make any sense. Else why leave your blade behind? And why, furthermore, fold Dyer's arms over her chest in a manner reminiscent of a Templar's burial with full rites. Mockery of the woman's profession, or remorse? He rubbed his eyes. Nothing about this had made sense, from the beginning, and great epiphanies regarding the killer or his motives didn't seem likely in the offing. Threnn, who looked to have been pulled away from her lunch, spoke from her position beside the slain woman. "Well, do you have anything that will lead me to who did this or have you just been playing with Sera all morning?"

Sera blew a raspberry, one of her favorite responses to most anything, and said, "He's been doing this and playing with me, all morning, miss sergeant. We've already made great discoveries."

"Yeah," Varric said. "We were actually on our way to talk to Ser Leslie to at least talk to her about what happened to Drand. Shame we got here ten minutes too late to do anything for the poor woman."

"Indeed." Threnn checked her notes. "She's been here only a month or so, came with the Templars who made it out of Therinfall Redoubt, had worked in Markham and Cumberland before that." She clucked her tongue. "Such a shame to survive the total dissolution of your order and die of a paring knife jammed in your gullet."

"Doesn't seem like any reason for killing her, either," Varric said. "Drand I can understand--we talked to Ser Yennifer Child, one of the contacts on your list, and found out that Ser Moden had an overwhelming fondness for recruits and apprentices alike."

"Not surprising."

He grunted. "That much of a cynic, Sergeant?"

"Yes. No. Maybe. I've been in the army long enough to have seen a lot of things--saw my own life fall to pieces at Ostagar. I know some men, given power over others, will abuse it. No real shock that Drand was one of them."

"It's a real shock about Dyer, though," Varric said. "She was the one that yanked the rug out from under Drand's little scheme and got him reassigned to the apprentices. A real hero."

"Well, maybe," Sera said. "Maybe a hero to the Templars but what about them apprentices? Might not have seemed so heroic, Drand running his grubby little hands up under their robes." She gestured lewdly.

"Maybe. Yeah, that makes sense." Varric tugged his chest hair. "I guess we ought to start narrowing our search for the killer to the ranks of mages."

"Ah, wonderful," Threnn said. "There's only been a few hundred of those milling around the Inquisition since the Redcliffe debacle."

"Well," Varric said, "it's better than a couple of thousand, before we worked that out, isn't it?"

"I suppose."

"Yeah, and I think I can make it a little easier on your lazy arses." Sera pointed to Dyer's arms, folded so neatly, and beside her body. "The same bitsy little footprint we saw before, and a handprint on her arm just as little, where miss murder sauce posed her like a dolly. Look for a mage girl... girl mage. Magette? Look for one of them, or an elf, mister or miss elf mage. Or a dwarf, but there's only one of them and she's Dagna." Sera giggled. "I bet she aint been out of the shop long enough to gank one folks, let alone two of em."

"This leaves us back where we started, though. No real leads to speak of, maybe a clue what got Drand killed but less for Dyer." He consulted the notepad. "I guess we could go and have a word with Ser Braden Horace or--" Varric started, was sure his eyes must have been on his cheeks. "Helisma Derington? How's she tangled up in this?"

"I figure she was at old Randy-Drandy's Circle, maybe got made Tranquil by him in the first place. Maybe it was... ye know." Sera forked her fingers in front of her mouth, flicked her tongue between them. "Relational, like."

"I never even thought about that," Varric said.

Threnn nodded. "It's a bad habit. We see the Tranquil, when we encounter them, like furniture. They may not be pulled by passion but they're as human as any of us, might know or do anything another person could."

"You're right. It's just not a thing most of us think of."

Sera's face darkened. "Bet apprentices think of it all the time at Circles. Little people cowering from the big brand."

He squeezed her shoulder. "Not anymore. We take care of things differently here, Buttercup. You know that. There's counseling, training--"

She stuck her tongue out. "So many Templars, someone's gonna get branded. So many mages, someone's gonna get possessed. I aint no genius but even gutter trash like ol' Sera can see the world don't change overnight. Don't even change its underwear, usually."

He threw his hands up. "I'm surrounded by cynics! Ah, well. I guess we're going to visit Helisma, then, since we at least know her pretty well and I think we'll get truthful answers out of her."

"Yeah," Sera said, "yeah. Plus I'm gonna ask if Drandy got randy with her. If he did..." She smacked her fist against the other palm. "It's lich time, and then dead lich time, and then football with his stupid, ugly lich head time. Heli's just too peachy-sweet for that shite."

Varric tucked his notes away, again, into the folds of his scouting jacket. "I agree. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, though. You know how much Josie hates the mess walking corpses make on our carpet..." They took their leave of Threnn and ambled towards Skyhold's Mage Tower.

They found Helisma pottering in the laboratory she shared with Minaeve, another of the Inquisition's non-mage but still magically inclined people. The Tranquil woman was mixing potions, poisons and bombs, seemed to have been at it for some time judging by the diversely hued smudges on her long, delicate fingers. Minaeve worked in a corner of the lab, over a smoking beaker where they finished the prepared, experimental concoctions for use by Inquisition agents, and hummed an old, nameless tune to herself. Varric thought it was nameless, at least, but who knows what lore a Dalish might have access to--even one who'd been exiled since she was barely old enough to toddle.

Helisma nodded, by way of greeting, but did not put down the vials she was working with. She seemed happy enough, but that was the big question, wasn't it? Could a Tranquil, cut off from the Fade and his or her emotions, ever feel something as simple and profound and happiness? They still possessed the capacities for decision making, loyalty, the intellectual components of love, fear or grief but... Varric wondered if it was like seeing music written on a page in the same way a tone deaf man could read notes but not play them. 

It was an area of great curiosity for many dwarves, to be truthful. The Tranquil were cut off from the Fade and the dreams that link produced in humans and elves--along with the Fade's more unsavory denizens. It was a blessing, or so the Chantry and their Templars said at least, for less talented magic persons to be able to live their lives productively without the constant fear of possession. No one had ever asked the Tranquil themselves, or at least had not gotten an answer coherent to one still in full possessin of his faculties. It was strange, though, that the severing of one's connection to the Fade and its wonders and horrors should have such a debilitating effect on a person's psyche. Dwarves, after all, went through their lives entire without touching the Veil even once and it's not like this made Orzammar--or the Merchant's Guild for that matter--into a paradise where logic ruled supreme and emotions were stifled. Some surfacers even commented, wrly, that dwarves managed to pack more passion into their compact bodies than a regiment of Qunari could manage in all their tall, muscular glory. Most of the time Varric didn't disagree with them; political, religious and business discussions among dwarves tended to be a bit robust, to say nothing regarding matters of the heart.

He studied Helisma's exquisite, olive face. Wide set, gleaming fawn's eyes flanked an aquiline nose. They were set off by full, pouting lips, high cheekbones and a wreath of raven curls so glossy that they seemed to be clusters of overripe grapes in high sunlight. "Atrast vala, Master Tethras," she said. "Sera, I hope that you are not here to cause mischief, again. It was hard enough for Minaeve and I to recapture all those firesprites you set free."

"Heh, sorry." Everyone present knew she bloody well wasn't. "Just figured I had found me a cause to care about. Free the firesprites!"

Minaeve noticed their company, set her potion to simmer and strolled across the lab. She wiped excess purple liquid off her small, strong hands--wrapped around with old scars from years of horticultural work--with a greasy shop towel. "I've got another cause for you to take up, crazy beans. It's called 'don't get Minaeve's eyebrows burned off by the firesprites.'" She chuckled. "I swear... they were flittering around Helisma, landing on her shoulders and singing like sweet little tame nightingales on a princess out of legend. Me they were trying to roast alive."

"Entertaining as it is to listen to the two of you bicker," Varric said, "I'm here to ask Helisma a few questions." He offered her, he felt, one of his most disarmingly rakish grins. "Is that okay with you, Peach?"

"Yes, Varric. It is to do with the murders of Ser Moden Drand and Ser Leslie Dyer, isn't it?"

This took him aback. "Er, yes. How did you know about that?"

She shrugged. "We are not isolated from the world, here, much as I might prefer that sometimes. People have brought us work all day, and with it gossip concerning Skyhold's denizens."

"That makes sense... I guess we forget you toiling up here in the lab, sometimes, until we need a test result from you. You have my apologies, Helisma."

"That is all right. Tranquil are used to being forgotten, set aside like old furniture, because of the discomfort we cause so many. There is no insult intended and so no apology is necessary. Besides... Minaeve--and Dagna when she can be torn from her own work--are all the company I need."

"Right... it's... good to have all you need, I guess." The words fell lame from Varric's mouth. He regretted them; some writer he was, no better able to express himself than that. Besides... it was different for dwarves. Humans needed their dreams, to brush the Fade's glories and dangers with sleeping fingertips if nothing else. "So. No other way to do this than dive right in. You're on a list of Ser Moden Drand's known acquaintances in Skyhold. Now, I'm not going to ask if you know why someone might have wanted him dead--Drand was a bastard and a half--but I just want to know what your connection to him was."

Her perfect features were improved, somehow, by being drawn into a frown. "Bastard and a half? I... do not understand. How could Ser Moden Drand have been one man, more than one, and less than two?"

Varric scuffed his feet. "It's just a figure of speech, Peaches. Means that I know how he was, back before Lord Trevelyan started kicking the Chantry clean."

Sera huffed. "It's a stupid figure of speech."

"What would you call him?" Mineave said. 

"Arse-robbing bloody cunt-poppet."

"Oh, that's so much clearer!"

Helisma cast her gaze from side to side, fidgeted her small feet back and forth on the carpet. Varric, having noticed in the past that Helisma and many other Tranquil seemed easily distressed by discord and raised voices, put out a hand to shush the bickering elven women. "Don't worry about them, just focus on me. Tell me where you met Ser Moden."

"It was during my training, at the Markham Circle. He was the Templar assigned to watch over the apprentices. He was an unkind, corrupt man. He noticed many of the apprentices, took them aside to do things with them, to them. He noticed me." She twisted the sleeves of her cream colored robe.

Varric could imagine the sort of notice that someone as obliteratingly gorgeous as Helisma could produce in a man like Drand. Arse-robbing bloody cunt-poppet, indeed... sometimes Sera just had a way with words that the poet in him envied. He suppressed a shudder. "Was he the one who branded you, Peaches?"

"No. He had been disciplined again, by a Seeker, and reassigned before that. The one who branded me was kind--Ser Richard Connleigh. He said that it might pinch. I did not even feel so much as that."

Varric felt his stomach fall at how casually she talked of the enormous, emotional maiming she'd undergone. Sera, to his side, had bared her teeth in an ugly grimace. It gave her the aspect of a queer, feral cat. "Did Drand harm you, before he was reassigned?"

"I was touched, occasionally. He would run his hands over my clothes, squeeze my breasts or buttocks, grab me hard between the legs, try to rub himself again me." That damned monotone, flatter than the Bannorn, made it all so much worse. "Others among the apprentices had it much worse, from him, and none so bad as his Templar recruits before. I counted myself lucky. As long as I had the Circle's animals to care for, the familiars and pets of the enchanters, I was satisfied." The skin around her eyes tightened, almost imperceptibly. "Once, before the Seeker arrived to investigate him, he threatened to take that away from me if I did not give in to his advances. I cried myself to sleep in the depths of grief. That's the first night I heard a wintry voice, colder than wind off the Frostbacks, in my ear."

No one could speak, for a moment. The calmness with which she'd described the first, tentative approaches of a despair demon had robbed their breath. Finally, Minaeve stepped in front of Helisma, between her and Varric. "She has been here with me all day, Master Tethras. Working at her station."

His brow furrowed. "Excuse me?"

She drew herself to her full height, not much more than Varric's own. "I see what you're doing--blame these murders on the Tranquil, drag her off and have done with no one to miss her. I won't stand for it, durgen'len. I do not have much magic, but there is enough in me to make this miserable for you." She braced, let her blood call to the vials of lyrium used for testing in the experiments they ran here. Candles flickered under flasks, all around the long, narrow room.

"Let's not get carried away, here."

"That's the point, lethallin. Mien'harel, abelas bellanaris."

"What I mean is that no one has any intention of dragging Helisma anywhere--unless Sera takes her out for sweets."

She giggled, partly to downplay the fact she was fingering a flask of liquid fire at her belt, had worked herself around to flank Minaeve. The possibility of ugliness in the room seemed very real. "For serious, Minnie-britches. Sounds a blast--pastries and shit."

Helisma stepped between them, laid her hands on Minaeve's shoulders. "Stop, please. Varric and Sera are our friends, have always acted kindly. They will not hurt me."

Minaeve growled, deep in her throat. "Ar lath ma, but you are the most naive woman. Do you think they won't try, if they become convinced you did this thing?"

She seemed confused. "I did not, emma lath. I have been here with you since morning; we have told them as much."

"It does not always matter what the truth is, ma vhenan, only what people are willing to believe." Tears glittered at the edges of Minaeve's huge, celadon eyes. "I have told you what happened to so many Tranquil, during the civil war, the ones I could not help."

"You have, and I know that these things are true because you have not lied to be before. But neither Varric nor Sera is Templar, maleficar or Venatori and Lord Trevelyan has been kinder to us than anyone else has ever been. It will have only good effects, to help them."

Varric had heard the stories, too, and shifted uncomfortably at the thought of this gentle, beautiful, spectacularly intelligent woman taken as a rogue Templar's slave or having the flesh boiled from her skull to make an occularum. "We're not going to harm her, Minaeve, I swear to the Maker. She didn't do anything, anyway, and I won't do anything to anyone innocent. You know I'm not a liar."

Minaeve snorted. "You're a storyteller; you lie for a living."

He grinned. "Only professionally, Kitten. Outside of work I'm the most honest dwarf you'll ever met."

"Not so hot if you've met a lot of dwarfs," Sera said. "The lying little shits. But... yeah. Varric's okay."

Tension drained out of the elven woman's long, lean face and, by extension, the room's connection to the Fade's power. "All right. I'll trust you. And let you in on a little secret. If you want to know what might have gotten Ser Leslie killed, then go back and talk to your friend Ser Yennifer. She can tell you what the recruits did, for Drand, after he was transferred, to make sure he kept away from them." She made a crude curse sign, with two fingers, and spat between. "Beasts at Markham... an insult to the Templar Order. Not fit to lick Ser Claire-Lune de Olivet's boots for sure, Maker rest her soul."

"Thanks," Varric said. "We'll head back and talk to Ser Yennifer again. You've been a great help; I really do appreciate it."

Helisma bowed. "You are welcome, Varric. There is never a problem with helping a friend. Oh, and Sera?"

"Yeahness?"

"I would very much like to get sweets with you, one day. Only pastries, though." She frowned. "The excrement would taste most unpleasant."

Semantic confusion, Varric wondered, or the sly sense of humor that Dorian suspected some Tranquil retained? It took Sera a moment to process, and she cackled. "Yeah, totally, Miss Chicken. We'll call it a date." They took their leave, amid Sera's sparkling laughter, to return to the Herald's Rest.


	4. Chapter 4

They found a mob scene at the Herald's Rest, clustered around something right outside the wall. The sun dipped below the cloud's to the west of Skyhold's multi-floor barracks. It cast the whole scene in stark chiarascuro, like the Antivan painters loved so much in their dramatic murals depicting Andraste's suffering and death. Threnn stood, hands on her hips, scowling. Arella, Skyhold's surgeon, knelt beside a slumped figure. She consulted with Finn Aldebrant, a young spirit healer from the Kinloch Hold Circle. Neither looked confident. Finn asked a quiet question, just out of Varric's hearing, and Arella shook her head in response. Her lips, tightly pursed, said as much as words might.

When they drew closer Varric and Sera understood even more clearly. Ser Yennifer Child reposed against the Herald's Rest's rough, Ferelden oak wall. She might have looked at peace save for the ragged hole in her belly, between the ribs and navel. She clutched it with both hands interlaced to prevent the spillage of any more of the purple loops of bowel that had already started to creep between her fingers. Blood poured from the ghastly wound and, with each wheezing breath, her mouth.

The best that could be said for her was that she was alive, though Varric couldn't fathom how or for how much longer. Her face stood shockingly pale against her crimson bib and made even her dull hair vibrant. The one good eye glittered lapis hatred. This woman knew her life had crept away, first by feet and then inches, and had business to care for before her spirit transected the Veil.

Arella nodded curtly to Varric on his arrival. "Call from Cabot about a ruckus here at the tavern brought Threnn, one of her runners brought Finn and me. This woman's was attacked, just like Ser Moden and Ser Leslie. I did what I could with a compress, and Finn's slowed the bleeding to a trickle with a glyph of paralysis. The big artery in her belly was nicked. I'll try to go in and sew it shut, but I don't know if she'll make it. She made me wait for you, before I started. Said she had something important to say that couldn't be set aside for 'some bitch doctor.'"

Varric thanked the surgeon and knelt beside Yenni. "Hey," he said. "I think you might have looked a lot better."

Her breathing, slow and ragged, picked up a little at the sight of him, as did the flow of blood. "Look like... shit. Shoved my steel in, though. Didn't... fuck that up."

"Who was it? Do you know?"

She assayed what might have been a shrug, under better circumstances. "Some cunt. Didn't catch her name." Yenni wheezed--it might have been laughter. Blood sprayed Varric's face. "Knife-ear bitch like your friend. Darker hair. Prettier face." She sighed, let her eyes slip shut. Varric thought her lost, a moment. She shuddered back to life. "Follow the trail. Blood. Fucked her up... bad as she fucked me."

Varric doubted that, if she'd managed to stagger off the scene. Still, there was no harm in humoring a dying woman, and there was an evident trail of blood and trampled grass. Someone had surely noticed her "We'll get her, Yenni. Trust me. We'll get her for you."

"Fuck me. Gonna be dead by the time... you do." She let her head loll back, eye no longer alight by furious Veilfire. "Hurt so bad. Sleepy. Take a little nap, wake up in hell."

Varric squeezed her shoulder, hoped it didn't hurt her, and stood to face Arella and Finn. "She's not very pleasant, but that's a tough woman. Take care of her."

Arella's face darkened. "Everyone always says that. It's as if you people believe that, for some reason, if you don't remind surgeons and healers to do our jobs that we'll just go and and get pint and leave your friends and loved ones to bleed to death. I've been a surgeon for twenty years, I think I can handle at least doing my best."

Varric raised his hands. "Okay, okay. I believe you. I just said it because I don't imagine that Yenni has much of anybody else to ask you to, all right? So... take care of her. Please."

She softened. "We will. Sorry I snapped. Stress of the job. I doubt it'll do much good, but we will." She turned to Finn, began making preparations for him to lull Yenni to sleep with a relaxation wisp so she could open the hole in her further, allowing access to the damaged artery so that Finn could close it with a direct application of Fade energy. Amazing what a surgeon with encylopedic knowlege of the body and spirit healer could do in tandem, Varric thought. Shame, he figured, that it didn't seem likely to help in this situation. He'd seen people hurt worse than Yenni, mostly during the Qunari affair and in those last, awful days before the end, but only a few and none of them had survived longer than a few hours even under Anders' care.

No matter. The only thing to be done for her was finding the one who'd killed her. "All right, Sera... you're the one who can follow the blood trail. Let's get to work."

"Right-o, your whoreship." She giggled, bent at the waist and scuffled along the path of broken, crimson blades of grass like a nug after deep mushrooms. 

Halfway across the courtyard, leaning against the wall of his Chargers' barracks, they found the Iron Bull. He clutched a bleeding slash in his vast pectoral muscle. The expression on his broad, handsome face hovered between stunned outrage and the sort of cold fury that meant men were about to die. Sera pulled to a stop. "Oy, Bully-boy... what the hell happened to you?"

He growled. The rumble might have formed ice crystals in a Fereldan Frostback's boiling blood. "I saw a girl I used to know running past. You won't believe it, but I think she might have been a Ben-Hissrath agent. Bleeding pretty bad, and when she got close enough I saw a dagger's handle sticking out of her shoulder. I put my arm out to stop the silly imekari qalaba, ask if I could help her. She swept a little palm knife across my chest, hollered 'tal-vashoth!' and scarpered."

Varric cast his gaze toward the trail, now confused by another set of feet. "Did you happen to see which way she went?"

Bull gestured with his horns. "Toward the forge, and thanks for the concern."

"Bull, you get hurt worse during sex."

"Yeah, normally, but I can't move my arm too well... and don't get all cute about how I'm usually tied up during sex and can't move my arm too well then, either. I'm the one who does the tying, Mr. Funny Dwarf." He flexed his massive shoulder to show him, got little response below it. "I think she might have sliced into the muscle. It doesn't really hurt but..." He shrugged. "Not much use if I can't swing my axe. Dalish and Stitches are inside, getting ready to check it out and patch me up if they have to."

Sera snorted. "Bloody useful backup archer you've got there, Bully."

"Yeah, she's the best. You can never have too many backup archers in this weird-ass world of ours." He stretched his neck, winced when it pulled the wound. "Krem and Skinner were out here kicking a little shit with me; they took off after her. They'll be some help when you catch her up, at least."

"Thanks, Bull." Varric patted his good shoulder. "Take care of yourself. We'll have to find another eight foot tall, horned slab of muscle if you're not careful."

He chuckled. "Panahedan, friends. And watch out for my guys. I wouldn't normally say so, against one little Qunari elfette armed with a fucking cheese knife but..." He shook his head. "It's been a long time since I saw someone move that fast."

They found Krem beside the anvil where Dennet and Blackwall could usually be found doing their shoeing work. Dennet had been at the Herald's Rest, enjoying one of his philosophical conversations about the merits of lowland versus Avvar horse-rearing with Sky Watcher, and Varric would have bet most of the Tethras fortune on Blackwall having been hovering around Josephine somewhere. Bull's lieutenant leaned on his sword, back against the anvil itself, and clutched an ugly wound on his thigh. Though bloody, it did not seem deep. His short hair, limp with sweat, lay plastered across his forehead. He greeted them cheerfully enough. "Hullo, Sera. Varric."

Sera nodded. "Krem. Shocked to see you miss a fight, mate."

"Hard to navigate the stairs like this. Be much obliged if you'd go and lend Skinner a hand. She's up there with a bloody mad elf and I'd hate to see her get hurt."

Varric raised and eyebrow. "Madder than Skinner herself?"

He chuckled, then winced. "Well, maybe not that mad. Hard to say."

"We'll see about it. How did she manage to cut you and the Bull up so bad?"

"Lightning quick, mates. That knife flashed under my shield before I could even register it moving, and she jumped back before Skinner's even cleared her sheathes. Then they went up the stairs." He chuckled, though a pale face belied more pain that he let on. "All I could hear her muttering was, 'wish it was a fucking shem.'"

"If wishes was horses we'd be in a river of glue, Krem of the Crop," Sera said. "I for one will be punchy pleased to knife this wee bitch in the ears. She's right about drowned us in blood, today."

"So I gather. I wonder what has been going on, to bring about such a morning?"

"Something between mages and Templars, I surmise," Varric said. "The three victims were Templars, and one was an abusive bastard."

"Yeah," Sera said, "but Yenni wasn't... she's just an arsehole. And Ser Leslie was the actual opposite of abusive. She was... er... non-abusive. Almost a friend, what, as much as an armored git could be said to be friendly."

"Let's go help Skinner and find out, then." 

They took the stairs fast, Sera bounding up two at a time and Varric plodding more methodically behind her. On the second floor, outside the room where Blackwall usually slept--when he did not, Varric suspected, visit a certain Antivan woman--two elves circled each other, crouched in the low stances of Rivaini double dagger duelists.

The similarities were more immediately obvious than the differences. Both were of a size, short and petite, with dark hair, pale skin and the large, luminous eyes common to so many of the People. Where Skinner was a ball of wiry muscle, though, her opposite number was lanky. No scars crisscrossed her face, and the delicate nose had not been broken and rebroken by abuse, brawling and battle. Her lips, generous instead of thin, were created for sardonic smiles instead of hateful scowls. 

Varric buried his hands in his face. He knew this woman, had for a few years this now. They'd met at Chateau Haine, during his time as the friend and unofficial chronicler of Declan Hawke, the infamous Champion of Kirkwall, during the Mark of the Assassin Affair, after a successful wyvern hunt and disastrous masquerade ball. He remembered, particularly, how she had mimicked the cry of a wounded nug, splashed with the creature's blood, to draw an alpha wyvern from its lair. Aveline and Fenris had turned their faces away in chagrin. Declan, for his part, found the whole display cute but, considering his marriage to Merrill, he seemed to have rather a weakness for deranged elven women. Varric spoke, hoped his voice wasn't too muffled. "Hello, Tallis."

She smiled, eyes bright. "Hey, Varric! We'll talk in a few minutes..." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm sorta busy with this bas right now."

"Oh. Good. I'm sure it'll be... interesting to catch up." He couldn't think of anything else to say. What else, indeed, was there?


	5. Chapter 5

"So..." Varric tugged his chest hair. "I really do hope life's been treating you pretty well, Tallis." He tried to ignore the tension in the room, the deadly women with daggers. Tried to ignore how Sera fingered a flask of fire in one hand and flask of ice in the other. Something about "running hot and cold" galloped through his mind, but he rejected it for being too cliche. Even in a crisis he thought, Varric my man, even in a crisis... you can't forget your obligation to literature. 

These were, in spite of their delicate seeming beauty, three of the most dangerous members of the elven people and fair sex he'd ever known. The only thing he could have imagined making the situation worse, more explosive and definiteley more demony would have been Merrill in the corner, hurling blood magic with no regard for her safety or anyone else's. Not that Sera's flasks would make too much exception, in close quarters like this, if she got nervous or excited. Which, unfortunately, seemed like a real possibility. "For the love of shit, Chesty, what the fugg muffins? We've got the killer. Well, two killers. But we like one of em. Or at least don't hate her."

Tallis raised an eyebrow. "Jeez, V... this is the level of conversation you're getting these days?" She dropped into a lower stance, turned Kathryn and Thane over in her fingers. "Soon as I take care of this fenedhis lasa we can talk like real people." She winked at Sera. "Using, you know... words."

Sera, eloquent as always, made a rude gesture and blew a raspberry. Skinner narrowed her eyes. She quivered. "Piece of crap, eh?" She spat. "Stupid bitch thinks the Alienage gutter slut can't speak any elvish, eh? Think all your Qunari education makes you funny?" A slow grin spread across her face, enhanced by cuts at the edges of her mouth and harlequinn's tears in the corners of her eyes. It left her already unnerving visage pretty damned well uncanny terrifying. "How about I slit your throat and shit down the hole? That'll make Skinner laugh."

Tallis' huge, blue eyes grew even wider. She paled. Some of it surely stemmed from blood loss--wadded cotton packed around Yenni's knife said she'd tried some basic healing but it was clear that the charming little spy had leaked--but Skinner's... banter... might have ben made the Iron Bull himself blanch. Even Sera couldn't manage to giggle. "Maker's musty balls... that is one angry girl." Varric couldn't think of any better way to put it. He wondered, sometimes, if a rage demon possessed Skinner, or if she possessed a rage demon.

He'd have to ask her later. She flung herself at Tallis, a flurry of four limbs and Carta claws. Tallis dropped a step, turned and met her fury with cool precision. Her grace and skill were unquestionable, had been trained to near perfection by years with Ben-Hissrath masters, Rivaini duellists and Orlesian salles des armes. Her daggers were superior and, furthermore, she wore the leather armor Where The Heart Lies, given to her by Cairn the Templar. In perfect health she'd have handled Skinner's mad rush with little trouble, struck a crippling or killing blow and even bowed to her audience... that was how it was supposed to have gone, at least.

She was not in perfect health. She was also not, Varric surmised, supposed to have been stuck in the shoulder by one of her marks, tracked bleeding across Skyhold like a dying halla and cornered by a knife-wielding lunatic. Skinner possessed little skill, less patience and only the grace of a shriek, feral and awful. Most men, when she launched such an assault, were taken so aback by the furious flurry of attacks that one, out of dozens, was bound to slip through the guard. If that one should happen to strike something vital, throat or the great artery of thigh or belly, wonderful. If not? Also wonderful. Skinner's blades would come again and again; each rise and fall meant more blood. Varric shuddered. It was an ugly way to fight but, against most... so, so effective.

Proving that way today, too. Tallis, visibly slower than Varric had seen her before, wove Kathryn lower and more weakly in the classical Rivaini patterns of attack and defense, thus could not send Thane probing as deeply into Skinner's defenses as she might, nor hook her heel around the other woman's ankle to trip her as effectively. The tips and edges of the Carta claws flashed ever closer to Tallis' face. Once, by sheer dumb luck, she bobbed her head in time to avoid the clipping of an ear. She breathed steadily for a moment, then drew breaths through her nose and blew them out her mouth and finally, unsteady on her feet, gave way to the ragged, rapid gasps that characterized panic breathing. Skinner, sweat gleaming on her forehead but otherwise unaffected, purred. She was a great, lethal cat like those who took unwary travelers on lonely roads in the Dalish Emerald Graves.

Varric nudged Sera, his elbow against her thin, sturdy hip. "Hey, Buttercup... you happen to have a flask of lightning on you?"

"Yeah... you thinking it might be a fun game uncorking it, hey?"

"Probably. Well, not for them. Until they wake up and figure out they haven't disemboweled each other."

She palmed the silvery flash, marked with a jagged bolt and, curiously, little butterflies Sera had scrawled around it. Its opposite side revealed a hastily doodled skeleton, probably Vivienne judging by the exaggerated Orlesian enchanter's hennin, being shocked by a giggling elf. She pressed her thumb to the flash's cork. "Entirely the fuck too much disemboweling today. It's put me right near off lunch."

"Well, it is almost suppertime, anyway."

"See? No lunch. Just intestines lying around all over. Yuggity-ew." She scrunched her face, stuck her tongue out. The effect was not unlike a seasick nug. Varric filed that away; it might go well in a future book, provided Sera never connected the description with herself.

"Can you hit them so you just knock them out," he said, "no killing? Skinner belongs to Bull, after all. We don't want to go breaking our friends things. And I know Tallis; she's a good woman."

"Bloody stabby for a good woman!"

He made a shushing gesture. "What I mean is that she probably has a pretty good reason for what she did, and keeping her alive is the only way we're ever going to figure out what it was."

"We think we know what it was, Mr. Smarty-Dwarf," she said. "Ol' Randy-Drandy sending his lil' Templar looking for mages where it didn't belong to be."

"Doesn't make sense, anymore. Tallis is Ben-Hissrath, like Bull used to be. She probably wouldn't have a heck of a lot of interest in what some corrupt mage hunter was doing with his spare time."

"Maybe she's freelancing, as a cover, you know," Sera said. "Like how Bull does, with his Chargers."

"Could be, but that still leaves us wondering who hired her to take out Drand, Ser Leslie and Yenni." He tugged his chest hair. "So... do you think you can make this happen without killing them both?"

Sera giggled. "Mate, I aint even particularly sure this won't fry us up crispy." She popped the cork. A fuse sizzled. Seconds remained to re-cap the deadly little silver bottle.

"Er," he cracked his knuckles. "Maybe this isn't such a hot idea."

"Hot only counts in horseshoes and exploding flasks!" Before Varric could even say that this didn't make any sense, or much of anything else for that matter, she tossed the flask where the two women fought. It landed between Skinner's feet, where Tallis had ducked low to avoid a cut that would have opened her throat wide. The room exploded.


	6. Chapter 6

Varric had been there, on the Storm Coast, to watch the Vinsomer clear Red Templars from her lair. Lightning had crackled along their armor, singed hair and whatever the hell else, melted fat and boiled organs in their fleshy sacs. Close, he'd been so close. Close enough to feel the power, prickling his skin, dancing in the hair on his arms. Too damned close. No profit in getting within kissing distance of an enraged high dragon. He'd also stood alongside the Inquisitor against the Northern Hunter, helped chase the big ol' girl back to her home in the Frostbacks. She carried a wound, already, from the Crestwood militia's ballista but still emitted enough raw power to blast the helm, gauntlets and sabatons from Cassandra's body with a glancing blow, burn the tips of Bull's horns black.

The sensation of standing close to Sera's flask was not dissimilar. He knew how the mad little elf felt about dragons, wondered how she'd react when he revealed this tidbit of information to her. Probably cackle, proclaim it "fuggin' glorious" and start planning how to add the bees she loved to her deadly concoctions. She adored dragons, almost as much as she did creating nearly mindless havoc. Being compared to one might push her over the edge into ecstasy.

It took seconds for him to recover, Sera little longer because she didn't have a dwarf's natural resistance to magical and alchemical attack. Tallis and Skinner lay stunned in a heap of limbs and steel. Skinner's jaw clenched so tightly that he was amazed all her teeth had not broken. Tallis' arms and legs twitched, minutely, at odd intervals. A little string of drool ran down her chin. Sera unwound a coil of rope from her pack. They set about the swift, efficient task of binding their prey.

When they returned from delivering Skinner's semi-conscious form to Krem they found Tallis, leaned against Blackwall's doorframe where they'd left her, in the early stages of regaining awareness. "Oh, crackers," she mumbled. "What the hell just happened to me? Er..." She blinked those big, bright eyes. "I'm not sure Qunari believe in hell... I might. That was it. I'm pretty sure that was it. Yep, definitely hell. New discovery. Gotta tell the Ariqun."

Varric knelt beside her. "Might not be a good idea, Shivs. From what I remember of Qunari with 'ari' in their names they don't take to new ideas very well. You might find yourself short half a brain."

"I'm not already?" She tried injecting some venom into her voice, but it was too muzzy to manage much. "I guess this is how the famous Inquisition treats its prisoners."

Sera blew a raspberry. "Only the ones we're saving from an utter fuckin' bitch, mate, mad as a blister. Skinner was about to, well... skin ye."

"I'd have beaten her." A note of her old defiance. Varric felt reassured. "Well, if I hadn't been hurt I'd have beaten her. With... strategy."

"Sure, sure," Varric murmured. He squeezed Tallis' uninjured shoulder. "How's the other one feeling, over there? We yanked the knife out and slapped a poultice on it, but neither Buttercup nor I are exactly what you'd call a healer."

"Nah, it's better. Better." She blinked, phased out a little, blinked again. "Feels a lot better. I didn't figure that homely little Templar to be so quick with a dagger."

"No duh," Sera said. "Wouldn't have got stuck, otherwise, yeah? She got it worse than you, though."

The ghost of a smile. "Dead?"

"Just half gutted like a fish on the Denerim wharf." She waved a hand under her nose. "Whew. I could smell the onions she had for lunch, wafting up out the wound."

Tallis sighed. "Healer could have saved her, then. Damn."

Varric neglected to tell her about the tiny tear in Yenni's aorta, how even an experienced surgeon and spirit healer feared there was little they could do. "Any particular reason why she ought to be dead? Or why you've run so amok in general, today?" He counted on his stubby fingers. "Ser Moden Drand and Ser Leslie Dyer dead, Ser Yennifer Child dying the last I saw her, the Iron Bull and Krem wounded... you've been a busy girl, Shivs." He chuckled. "So have your shivs, come to think of it."

"Um... would you accept it if I just told you that Ser Moden and the other two were wicked Templars who abused the mages in their care?" She offered a hopeful smile.

"Not quite, sweetheart. For one thing," Varric said, "Ser Moden was the only vicious bastard in the whole group. Yenni was a little... rough around the edges, sure, but honest and Ser Leslie even worked at balking Ser Moden, back at Markham. Besides... what possible reason in Thedas could a Ben-Hissrath assassin have for going after three Templars she thought were abusing their authorities? It doesn't add up."

"I could have been working under-cover, like the Iron Bull used to before he actually went Tal-Vashoth. Maybe someone took out a contract on them, paid me to take them out." She nodded. "Yeah, that would make sense."

"Is it true?"

Her shoulders sagged. "No. Truth be told, all three of them were targets of the Ben-Hissrath--enemies of Par Vollen. I had to go after them. It was..."

Sera's bright, ophidian eyes narrowed. "If you say a demand of the bloody Qun I swear up one side the Maker and down His holy arse-crack that what Skinner had planned for you will look like a bloody vacation in Empress Celene's personal bedchamber, hey?"

"Oh, well... er... it was, though." She spoke to Varric, sotto. "She got a problem with Qunari?"

"Missionaries in general; always looking for the collection plate, our Buttercup. Now... it's story time. Tell me what three Templars could have done to hack off your Arishok so badly."

"Well," Tallis said, "it was more than three, to be honest with you--I just didn't expect some of these difficulties--and it wasn't our Arishok. I was called into service, on this mission, by the Ariqun--directly." She watched her feet, carefully, while speaking. "An insult leveled at our tamassrans, the soul of the Qun. An insult that we could not bear. She charged me with this." Tallis breathed forcefully. It blew an errant lock of hair from her eyes. "Sent on a mission by the leader of my organization, one of the leaders of my whole civilization, and I failed her. That's Tallis for you!" Her voice grew small. "Feels absolutely super."

Sera ruffled her hair. "Aw, c'mon, Stabby the Elf. If your big job was to kill ol' Randy Drandy you didn't muck it up so bad, right? I mean, mate, you killed the shite out of him."

"Thanks. I think. Also... Stabby the Elf?"

"Sera's got an idiosyncratic way of speaking, Shivs. Just how she does her. Now... if we untie you are you going to try to kill us and run off or anything crazy like that?"

Tallis sat silent a moment. Varric wondered if the idealistic, good-humored young woman he'd known before had been replaced completely by a Ben-Hissrath zealot. If so, he would mourn her. Tallis would be dead, only a Qunari tallis would remain. Finally, she spoke. "I feel too awful to try anything. My mouth is cottony and there are bees between my ears."

Sera chortled. "Heh. Bees."

Tallis shot her a glance. "I'm guessing she's got another one of those flasks?"

She nodded. "Hell yeah, lots. Got fire, ice, er... been trying to get sewage and fire in one, so's it'd be an exploding poo bottle."

"Yikes. No chance at all of me trying to break loose, then, even if I felt great. Which I seriously don't. So please with the untying? I can't feel my fingers."

Varric's thick fingers were not well suited to picking knots, especially with arthritis beginning to creep into them, so Sera attacked the other elf's bonds with ferocity and efficiency. They fell from her wrists, to the floor. She swung her hands to the front so fast that Varric worried, for a moment, that she'd gone back on her word, that things would go ill in this room when they were so, so close to turning around. Baseless worry, sign of impending middle age. He grimaced; he was turning into his mother. Ah well. Better than Bartrand.'

"Oh," she said, "oh... that feels so much better. Thank you." She flexed her hands. "I thought they were about to freaking pop or something. It was like all the blood had gotten squeezed into my fingers. So, er, can I go now?" She moved to rise.

Varric's heavy hand, soft on her shoulder, stopped the upward momentum. "I don't think so, Shivs. You've done a lot of damage, today, and I still haven't gotten a full accounting for it. This conversation needs to go on a little longer. Besides, you promised no escape attempts."

"Ah, well. That seemed too easy to be true, anyway. Besides... I think I just promised no stabbing. There was no stabbing involved at all, there."

He cracked a smile. "You're being a rules lawyer, kid. That's not a good look on anybody. Now... let's hear the whole, sordid tale."

"There's nothing too confusing about it, though, yeah, it's pretty damned sordid. A party of Qunari, including a saarebas, her arvaarad, a couple of karasaad and the tamassran, Shanereth. Her title meant 'words that uphold.' She was one of those who knew the Qun well, could teach it to children or express it eloquently to interested kabethari. They were a diplomatic envoy, to Empress Celene, seeking permission to reach out to the elves in the Alienages of Orlais ." She smiled, sadly. "The Empire is a wonderful place for finding viddathari. It's how I was inducted into the Qun, after all. In Tevinter, yeah, but it's the same idea."

"There's no way at all this could have ended in tragedy," Varric said.

"You don't have to rub it in, you know."

"Let me guess... your idea?"

"Oh yeah." She sagged. "I just thought that a concentrated effort to really spread the Qun like that would bring in so many people, so many elves especially. I mean, if just one person was touched by the Qun like I was, then I feel like my life would have real meaning. If this pilot group had worked out..." She sighed. "I don't like to think about it."

"What happened, Tallis?"

The concern on his face seemed to genuine, touched her so deeply, that she opened up. "The dreadnought they were traveling in got ambushed, a few miles out of Par Vollen, by a squad of Tevinter ships sailing off the Rivaini coast. They've been getting mauled, by the Felicissma Armada, and I guess finding a boatload of oxmen to take it out on seemed like a holiday."

Varric nodded. "Admiral Isabela hasn't risen much in the Imperium's estimation since we bid on her privateering services off Llomerryn."

"She couldn't fall much further in that of Par Vollen."

Varric grinned. "True, but pirates rarely win popularity contests."

Sera scratched her head. "Aren't dready-nots stacked as shite with all that explosive black powder you Qunnies love and Bull won't ever let me play with?"

"Yeah," Tallis said. "I didn't say the Tevinter ships were able to sink the dreadnought, did I? They were a pair of frigates and a three cutter rigged sloops. A low level mage at the prow of each sloop--probably laetani--and lots of magical hands on the frigates, including at least one altus spellbinder to concentrate fire." She shuddered. "From what I understand there was a lot of fire."

Varric held up a finger. "But you said they didn't sink the dreadnought."

"They didn't. Tevinter mage artillery is dangerous, but an iron banded ship armed with adaari isn't going to go down easily, is it?" When they didn't respond, she said, "The answer is no. I wasn't being totally rhetorical; I really didn't know if you realized how tough they were."

Varric did. "I remember your Arishok turning his dreadnought's cannonade on Kirkwall, during the battle. If those balls will do that to stone buildings that have been standing since the height of the Imperium I can only imagine the havoc they'd wreak among wooden ships and their rigging." Isabela had told him, once over far too many mugs of pale, amber ale in the Hanged Man, that the sails and ropework that kept a brig, frigate or schooner sailing proud and free could be more delicate than a dragonfly's wing.

"Yeah, well thirty-five pounds of flying iron will do that to stuff, won't it?" This question obviously not requiring an answer, she went on. "The dreadnought destroyed its attackers, but sustained heavy damage. It was able to limp to the coast of the Free Marches before fires overtook the gaatlok magazine. I think that they were able to hear the explosion from Starkhaven."

Varric chuckled. "Poor Choir Boy probably thought it was the Maker talking to him. So... where do Drand and the two women come in?"

"That's where the story gets really unhappy. Shanereth survived the detonation and, against all odds, drifted ashore near Hercinia. Three fishermen, apparently not blessed with great intelligence, couldn't tell one wounded woman from an advance invasion force. They took her into custody--imagine, a high-ranking Qunari tamassran captured by a trio of fools with marlin-spikes and fishing nets--and called for help from the Templars in Markham."

"Why get the Templars all up in their business?" Sera said. "Don't Hercinia have soldiers? I'm sure they do; friends have gotten chased by em."

Tallis shrugged. "I figure they decided that a Qunari equaled a heretic equaled a threat to the Chantry, and thus calling for help from the Order seemed like an intelligent solution. Can't really fault them for that, can you?" Her features darkened. "It's what happened next that made things really go sour."

"Let me guess," Varric said, "Drand, Ser Leslie and Yenni were dispatched to investigate?"

"Darn straight. I don't know what role they played, other than standing by and watching this happen, but Shanereth was hurt... she was no threat to anyone, and even if she didn't have the letters of inquiry to present at Celene's court a tamassran would be worth far more to anyone in Thedas alive than dead."

"A ransom? I didn't know Qunari knew the word."

"For most people, no... but tamassran are different. The beating heart of a civilization, Varric. Even a surface dwarf must have enough knowledge of the Shaperate to know how important that can be to a culture."

"Yeah, I do," he said. "Even if sometimes I think that Orzammar might be better off if our beating heart suffered a heart attack."

Her responding smile was wan and winsome. "They are the only ones who can pass the Qun to viddathari or the next generation. And besides..." Her voice grew small. "Shanereth was kadan to my Ariqun. This made the situation particularly volatile."

Sera clamped her hands over her ears. It pressed them flat against her head, pointing down, and produced a rather comical effect. "Oy... you're starting to sound like one of those sad songs that creepy Maryden sings all the time. All lost love and moping and not many interesting stabby bits."

Tallis shot her a cold glance. "Sorry if the recent tragedy of my commander isn't violently upbeat enough for you, bas."

She shoved a finger in Tallis' face. "I don't know quite what the hell that means but I'm going to ask my Bully and if it's something nasty I swear I'll break my foot off so far--"

Varric pressed her hand down. "Be patient. We need to see where this goes."

"All right... but stories are better with stabbing. I liked the part with ships fighting. Like dragons on water it must have been!"

Tallis went on. "It would have been so easy to write a request to my Ariqun, demanding ransom, or just to take Shanereth back to Markham so that any of the Circle's loyal healers could work on her and his superiors could deal with the problem. Drand wasn't that kind of man, though, was he?"

"Not that we've discovered, no," Varric said. "Prudence wasn't one of his virtues."

"What I discovered, when I was dispatched to Hercinia to investigate and 'fix my disaster' was awful. Shanereth, dumped in a shallow grave. Evidence remained that Drand had tortured her--a woman burned over much of her body--for information before slitting her throat." She spread her hands. "After that I questioned the fishermen--didn't harm them, in case you're wondering--and tracked Drand and his two accomplices trhough the ruins of Therinfal Redoubt to here. I was looking for some revenge, but I seem to have just found catastrophe on top of catastrophe."

"You've a talent for that, hey," Sera said. "You've raised more havoc than a barrel of friends and nugs together."

"Seriously. Shouldn't be much of a problem for much longer, though." She offered the most pathetic pout. "I doubt that the Ariqun will let me live long enough to regret the whole fiasco. Or, maybe she'll let me live just long enough to really regret the whole thing." She let her head droop forward, rest on her knees.

"We might be able to do something about that."

"What, Varric? If you hadn't noticed, evidence says that the Ariqun isn't going to be super forgiving about this. She makes the Arishok who destroyed Kirkwall look kind and reasonable by comparison."

"I'm not talking about your reconciling with the Ariqun and continuing to work with the Ben-Hissrath." He tried to pitch his voice for persuasion, the way Bartrand used to sell his more hair-brained business ventures. "The Inquisition needs agents with talent like you, Shivs. You'd be doing good work."

"Great. I could compound everything I've done by going Tal-Vashoth. I really would go down in glory as a credit to the Qun." Tears stood silver in the blue pools of her eyes.

"Does that look like a likely outcome right this minute, anyway?"

"Er, no. Right now I'm looking more like a cautionary tale for stupid little knife-ear viddathari. Do you really think there's any chance of me becoming an Inquisition agent? After what I've done?"

"Heh, we've sure as hell taken on worse," Sera said. "Ask about a chap named Thom Ranier. He weren't just half-arsed evil, that one."

"She's got a point," Varric said. "And it's not like you'd be working here in Skyhold or anything... that would be as dumb as you running back to the Ariqun... but an experienced scout and assassin... we might be able to find something for you to do. Thedas is a great big place."

"Yeah... maybe big enough for one clumsy elf to hide from a huge, super-pissed off lady with horns."

"So... what do you say?"

"I don't know. I guess. Maybe?" She sighed. "How's that for being sure. Hope you guys are okay with some ambiguity."

"I think it's all we can hope for, at the moment. Besides, Mischa is attending to some business in Denerim, right now. The King and Queen are still feeling a little peevish over the destruction that what they're calling 'our mages' wreaked in Redcliffe and the surrounding hinterlands. He should be back soon, though. A couple of weeks at the outside most."

"King Alistair?" Tallis frowned. "I hope the Inquisitor doesn't bring any festive cheeses as a peace offering. He might find himself clapped in irons."

"See? You're already contributing." Sera gave her shoulder a friendly whack. "A regular diplomat, this one."

"I just wish it hadn't come to this," Tallis said. "I dive into things so deeply, so deeply, that I always seem to lose myself... sometimes I feel like I just make it all worse, no matter where I go."

"Listen," Varric said. "You told me something, when we first met, when we were chasing the Heart of Many with Declan. 'There are other paths,' you said, 'they need not always lead to the same destination.' The path you're walking now has lead you into some serious problems... now it's time for you to solve them."

"Well," she said, "that is what my title means, after all."

"There you go. Now," he said, "let's try to find you something a little less bloody to wear while we wait for the Inquisitor. He's a pretty good guy, but I doubt he wants you dripping on his carpets."

She rolled her eyes. "Rules, rules, rules, everywhere I go. Maybe one day I'll learn to follow one or two of them."

"Somehow, Shivs, I don't think that's ever going to happen."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was fun. Getting my next project all geared up, a longer work for Nanowrimo, along the lines of "Guilt and Other Pastimes of the Living," based around the War Table missions An Ally From Starkhaven and Aiding/Annexing Kirkwall. I hope you all have enjoyed.


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